Page 75 of Stuck in Paradise with You

After the way he’s behaved the last two days, I’m not surprised when Henry seems to be the only person in the room either not able to connect the dots or not caring what picturethey draw. He stands from the sofa and it’s clear that Carrie is in his sights, but Joe places a hand on his arm and mutters something to Henry that makes him retake his seat.Yeah, back off, hotshot. I’m making a big enough mess of this without turning what’s going on between Carrie and me into a love triangle.

Remarkably, Char and Sanza are both lying fast asleep in portable cribs. The dogs, Jessie and Woody, are lying on the rug next to them, ever the protectors. Roy’s sister, Lola, is feeding her newborn in a nursing chair that looks like it might have been brought down here especially. Ella literally gets everything right when it comes to kids.

In another area, sitting along two sofas and starting a game of dominoes on the table between them, are Dionne, Glen, Thom, Troy and Kevin.

‘Give me a beat to grab a coffee, boys, then you can subject me to whatever Disney performance you want,’ I tell the kids.

I notice adult eyes are watching something behind my back, then Joe’s flick to me, questions written there that I’m not ready to answer. So I act like I don’t see it and move to the coffee machine in the kitchen area. There are two filter pots freshly brewed on two separate machines. There’s also a large fancy coffee maker – beans, milk foamer and all – but if I touch that thing, I’ll break it, so I pour myself a steaming mug of black coffee and take it over to the guys on the sofa.

Only when I sit near Joe, facing toward the dining table and the staircase I walked down, do I finally look at Carrie and see that, though she’s tried to cover up with make-up, her eyes are red and puffy, not just from tiredness but from tears.

She’s been crying.

‘Well, that must have been some night,’ Joe says for my ears only. ‘Because you both look likesh— Like you didn’t catch a wink of sleep.’

Shewalked out ofmybed, yet she’s the one who gets to cry about it? Where’s the justice in that?

Nevertheless, it tugs on the heart I’m desperate to turn to iron. How much easier this day would be if I just didn’t feel. Unfortunately, I’m not the guy who’s going to make love to a woman and not ask if she’s okay the next day when her eyes are showing me she’s not.

Jessie and Woody have that sixth sense dogs have because as I push up from the sofa, the dogs get up from near the sleeping girls and head over to Carrie, who strokes them and hugs their heads against hers.

How? How can a woman as warm as Carrie be a total and utter… ice queen?

Instead of causing a scene and going to her directly – probably to be embarrassingly brushed off with some callous remark – I go where I know she’ll head next: the kitchen for coffee. Not before I give Henry a look that says,If this storm doesn’t kill you, I might.

Though I still get the sense there are prying eyes in the room, general chit chat resumes. Kevin, the other security guy alongside Dave and Thom, must have locked us in now, as he comes into the basement and starts chatting in work mode with Dave. The group is complete and ready for the storm. Little do they know, I’m waiting for my own thunder to arrive in the kitchen.

I set about filling the machine with ground coffee for a double shot, a drop of foaming milk and a sweetener for Carrie’s drink. Less because I want to make her a drink, or do anything particularly kind for her, than because I need a diversion, something to do with my hands. The uncertainty I felt as soon as I woke alone is back, and seeing her coming my way in my peripheral vision only makes it worse.

In the time it takes me to find some backbone and look at her, she’s already grabbed herself a mug. ‘This is for you,’ I tell her.

She doesn’t look at me as she says, ‘I don’t need you to make my coffee and I don’t need you for anything else, for that matter.’ She speaks quietly, in hushed but wrathful tones.

She’s got a nerve.‘That’s not what you were saying last night.’

‘Last night was a blip. A complete lapse in judgment.’ She reaches to take the milk jug from me. When her fingers meet mine, she finally looks at me. ‘Trust me, it won’t happen again.’

‘You’ve got that right,’ I snap back, speaking close to her ear. ‘You’ve ghosted me for the last time, Carrie Briggs.’

I don’t know why I call her by her full name. I guess because my mom used to use my full name when I was in the doghouse as a kid. And Carrie is 100 percent in the doghouse with me.

Yet what has me seething even more than the woman herself is the way my pulse rate just surged with her sharp intake of breath, the way something jumped inside me when her pupils widened at my use of her full name. The way my fingers tingled under her touch.

Because, if I’m honest, I’d have taken the pain of today to have last night with her. I think. Maybe.

‘Ighostedyou?’ she bites, pointing at herself then me as she snarls. ‘Do you think whispering a few sweet nothings against my earlobe last night undoes the last seven years and what you did to me?’

I thought I was riled. This woman is furious. Her face looks like that of a Scotsman who’s been lying on the equator without sunscreen for a decade.

‘You want to know why I snuck out this morning, Luke? Because last night was a stupid, idiotic mistake.’

I don’t like the insinuation in her words and somehow, we wind up squared to each other, chest to chest. ‘You came to me!’

‘I know. It’s on me and I’m sorry.’ Her next breath presses her chest against mine and though my mind is screaming at her, my hands are itching to take hold of her, placate her and smooth this over. I don’t want her to be sorry. I wasn’t. At least, not last night.

I don’t want to fight with you.Those are the words spinning around in my head but I know they are, doubtless, not the right words to speak.

‘I shouldn’t have come to your pod but the rest of it is onus. We messed up, again. Foolishly thought that sex is enough when we both know it isn’t. Last night was…’ She blows out like she’s blowing a raspberry and I want to tell her,Yeah, I’m with you, it was beyond words.But she adds, ‘It didn’t answer any questions, it wasn’t an explanation for what you did to me.’

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